ZIP

ZIP is the most ubiquitous archive format in computing, developed by Phil Katz and PKWARE in 1989. It stores each file independently compressed using DEFLATE (or stored uncompressed), which means individual files can be extracted without decompressing the entire archive. The ZIP specification is open and has been implemented in countless programs and operating systems. Notably, modern office formats such as DOCX, XLSX, and EPUB are themselves ZIP archives containing structured XML.

File extensions	.zip
MIME type	application/zip
Developer	Phil Katz (PKWARE)
First released	1989
Category	Archives
Open standard	Yes

What opens ZIP files

• Windows Explorer (built-in)
• macOS Finder (built-in)
• 7-Zip
• WinRAR
• The Unarchiver

Browse File Formats

Reference details for 53 file formats — extensions, MIME types, what opens each one, and how they convert.

7Z Archives ABW Documents AI Images AVIF Images AZW3 E-books BMP Images CSS Other CSV Spreadsheets DjVu E-books DOC Documents DOCX Documents EPS Images EPUB E-books FB2 E-books GIF Images GZ Archives HEIC Images HTML Documents ICO Images ISO Archives JPG Images JSON Other Keynote Presentations Markdown Documents MOBI E-books Numbers Spreadsheets ODP Presentations ODS Spreadsheets ODT Documents OTF Other Pages Documents PDF Documents PNG Images PPT Presentations PPTX Presentations PSD Images RAR Archives RAW Images RTF Documents SVG Images TAR Archives TeX / LaTeX Documents TIFF Images TSV Spreadsheets TTF Other TXT Documents WebP Images WOFF / WOFF2 Other WPD Documents XLS Spreadsheets XLSX Spreadsheets XML Documents ZIP Archives